This invention concerns a pre-sealed applicator which may be opened at time of use to expose absorbent material protectively housed therein. More specifically, a disposable applicator is disclosed for applying sterile antiseptic to a preparation site on a patient, such as prior to making an injection or incision at such site.
Modern health care methodology places high emphasis on the need for general sterility, in both the patient environment and for paraphenalia such as instruments, syringes and the like which routinely or otherwise are brought into such environment. Frequently, such concern for a germ-free environment manifests itself in the form of sterile packed and disposable items for one-time use. For example, entire syringes and thermometers may be individually packaged in a sterile, prepared field, and designed to be disposed after a single use. Plastic gloves, paper gowns and shoe covers, thermometer covers and the like are similar examples of everyday items which typically are packaged in a sterile field and adapted to be disposed after a single use.
Of also great and still growing concern in the modern hospital setting is the cost of providing effective patient care. Hence, many disposable items are already made of relatively inexpensive materials such as paper or plastic instead of cloth or other more substantial materials.
Another aspect of cost consciousness suggests individualized packaging of items so that their consumption may be attributed to a particular patient, department, doctor, etc. Such aspect of cost consciousness is not as critically concerned with the low cost of each individual item (which remains an important factor from another view point) as it is concerned with the accountability of individual items. In other words, it is highly desirable from a cost management view point to be able to associate the costs of treatment and care for individual patients with such patients.
Yet another important concern relative the use of sterile, but disposable items is the working effectiveness of the product itself. Inexpensive plastic gloves in place of more expensive rubber gloves would not be desirable, much less tolerated, no matter how low their price, if their use impaired a surgeon's performance. Likewise, an inexpensive disposable syringe would not be acceptable just because of its low cost if it leaked or otherwise poorly performed during its actual use.
Numerous products achieve various balances among the criteria discussed above.
Disposable applicators or swabs are generally known, examples of such prior devices including:
______________________________________ U.S. PAT. NO. INVENTOR(S) ISSUE DATE ______________________________________ 4,360,020 Hitchcock, Jr. et al. November, 1982 3,369,267 Friedland et al. February, 1968 4,430,013 Kaufman February, 1984 4,140,409 DeVries February, 1979 4,173,978 Brown November, 1979 3,759,375 Nappi September, 1973 ______________________________________
Hitchcock discloses a plurality of flat cardboard strips joined at their edges. Each strip has an impregnated pad mounted and covered on the surface of a central portion of the strip. The cardboard strips may be separated and wing portions thereof (outside the central portions) folded back to form handles. Either the end portions of the handle wings are folded back or alternatively the wings are drawn up and glued together to define a triangle. The handle tips meeting in such triangle arrangement comprise finger grips for manipulation of the applicator. The triangle arrangement is formed from the farthest edges of the central portions and the tips are used as finger grips. The relatively rigid cardboard strip is not flexed so that the pad mounted on its flat lower surface is pushed away from the cardboard strip.
Friedland similarly has wings which fold back to meet at their edges. A pad member is formed within and throughout such wings, which impedes efficient application of fluid from the farther reaches of such folded-back wings through the small rectangular opening to the pad member which is exposed by removal of a strip panel 22. Such small application surface area of the applicator relative the volume of the pad member further deters efficient application of a desired fluid to a given surface.
Kaufman and DeVries both disclose disposable applicators which permit liquids to be squeezed out of a reservoir through a ruptured slit therein by bending the entire reservoir. Notably, an absorbent pad used to apply liquids freed up from the ruptured reservoir is not enclosed or otherwise apparently maintained sterile prior to its use. Hence, proper sterility is not ensured. Furthermore, Kaufman and DeVries both provide relatively small surface areas for actual fluid application, thereby also having reduced efficiency for application operations, as other products discussed above.
Brown and Nappi are representative of some further efforts typical of prior devices of a disposable antiseptic swab, having a frangible reservoir, for applying fluids using a relatively small surface area for application. Hence, the effectiveness of such applicators is considerably less than would be desired in a number of situations. For example, where speed was required to rapidly administer a shot or prepare an incision field, much time could be consumed in removing the Brown and Nappi swabs from their containers, and in subsequently applying their antiseptics over the desired surface (owing to the relatively small contact surface areas of their swab portions).